“I was just…” I held up my hands innocently. And then, inhibitions softened by all the champagne from earlier, I spilled. “I was going to send that to Christopher.”
“What?!”
“No.”
“Rachel!”
“Come on! I’m in a hot-pink dress, covered in glitter, drunk on romance. Is it so wrong to want to share that?”
“With him? Yes.” Eva zipped my phone in the pocket of her backpack.
“Because he…” I trailed off, trying to remember all the objections I’d had about Christopher before.
“Mm-hmm. Yep.” Eva nodded.
“Right. Okay.” I trailed off. Eva eyed me beadily. It was fine. I could always send him the photo tomorrow if I still wanted to.
Sumira stopped at her closet on her way to the bathroom; she opened it and fingered the exquisitely detailed red-and-gold gown she was going to wear the next day. She looked almost afraid to touch it. And all thought of Christopher Butkus wentpoof. All I could see at that moment was the look on my friend’s face, half-elated and half-terrified. I stood and hugged her from behind, laying my head on her shoulder.
“I’m getting married,” she whispered.
“You’re getting married.” We took a deep breath together.
“Time for bed, ladies!” Amy waved her toothbrush like a conductor’s baton. We trooped into the bathroom behind her to wash off the night’s festivities to make room for the next day’s.
The day passed in a beautiful blur. I didn’t have time to think about anything other than what was happening in the moment: hair and makeup, my emerald-green sari, Sumira and Ajay exchanging vows underneath a tent of flowers. There was one dizzy, surreal moment when I realized my best friend was getting married (married!) to a guy I hardly knew. But it passed. Her life was not about me, I knew that. Plus, Ajay looked damn good. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d been lifting weights every day since Sumira’s work party, which told me he knew he’d snagged a woman way out of his league and was trying hard to deserve her. He’d better keep that up.
And then it was time for the dreaded moment—no offense to Sumira’s cousin Souma, but she had some nutty ideas about the bridesmaid dance. We’d had to talk her out of an interpretive rendition of Sumira’s life from birth to death. Her second idea was to act out the history of mankind, culminating in the marriage of Sumira and Ajay. Very into the idea of setting the circle of life to song and dance, that one. We finally settled on the simple idea of—well, okay, it was still a bit complicated.
The music began, and I ran out ahead of the other girls with a tambourine to warm up the crowd. I skipped around the stage like a court jester, for such was my artistic instruction from Souma, who had deemed that I had the “right presence” for it—whatever that meant. (Nothing good, surely.) As I was jangling the tambourine above my head, I thought I glimpsed a certain face in the crowd, but I shook it off, sure I was imagining it. I focused instead on Sumira and Ajay, sitting in the seats of honor beforeme like the king and queen. And then the other girls joined me, and I swapped the tambourine for a handheld mask of Ajay’s face. The girls swarmed around me, feigning swooning fits as I flexed imaginary muscles and blew them kisses. Then we launched into our dance number, which for me (as Ajay) involved a lot of masculine foot stomping as the girls shimmied and twirled.
As I spun around with one of the girls, I glimpsed the face in the crowd again, and with a whooshing feeling as though the stage had dropped out from under me, I realized I wasn’t imagining anything: Christopher Butkus was out there, his face alight with laughter as he watched me. The beat of the Bollywood music carried me on, and I went through the motions that Souma had drilled into us: sprinkle the pepper, push the roof away, sneeze in your elbow. It was all I could do to focus on the beat; I couldn’t let myself look back at Christopher, though a voice in my head was screaming at the top of her lungs,What is he doing here?
Then the music changed and I tossed the Ajay mask to Sumira, who caught it, and the groomsmen stomped onto the stage to tumultuous applause. We paired off, dancing our way through the throes of romance and then, as the melody swelled, we fell into each other’s arms to gasps and sighs from the crowd. My dance partner, Ajay’s brother, was so dedicated to his performance that he grasped my buttocks quite firmly. When he dipped me, I let my gaze find Christopher: he shook his head and mimed cracking his knuckles, glaring at my partner, and I let out a surprised caw of laughter. Souma shot me a furious look from under her sweaty hair—though this was more comical than threatening, given that we were both hunched over, performing a sort of Cossack dance move. I took her glare to heart, however, and didn’t look at Christopher again for the rest of the performance.
When it was over, it took a while for the crowd to settle down,and then it was time for the bride and groom’s first dance. The song was sweet and slow. I hid myself in a far corner near the stage, ostensibly watching them dance, but, in truth, I wasn’t processing what I was seeing. I was frozen. A small part of me thought I should probably go talk to Christopher. But that seemed impossible. My mind stuttered over the question of why and how he had come to be here. I was grateful for the two hundred wedding guests—surely he wouldn’t be able to find me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him; it was only that it felt too important and too confusing for me to contemplate. That moment, the night of Thanksgiving, came back to me: the feeling of his hand in mine, the unsaid words that had been forming on his lips… What would he have said if my mom hadn’t interrupted?
The song ended and another more lively one started. The crowd around me thinned as people joined the dance floor. I allowed myself to scan the room, but I didn’t see him, and I thought maybe he’d left. Maybe he had been invited for some work reason; maybe he knew Ajay. That was it. If he had left after seeing me, then that had to be the end—he had no interest in me any longer. Probably he’d left to avoid having to talk to me. At this thought, it was like the music dimmed, like my lungs deflated. I thought of finding Eva and Amy, but they would be dancing with their partners, a thought that paralyzed me with something close to sadness.Dance, Rachel, I told myself sternly.This is Sumira’s wedding. Snap out of it and dance, Rachel.
“Rachel.”
He was there. He was at my side, and he was wearing a suit but no tie, top button undone, and I was at eye level with a tuft of dark chest hair, and this acted as a potent reminder that underneath his suit was his naked body, and my blood zinged through my veins as I looked up at Christopher Butkus’s face.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I said, because I am that smooth.
“Sumira invited me.” He wore a familiar little smirk, and he spoke in a low, amused voice as though we were continuing a conversation we’d just been having.
“Why?” This caught me off guard. I’d never liked surprises, and this felt like someone was playing a prank on me. The strip of midriff showing under my sari prickled with goose bumps.
Christopher hesitated; he didn’t seem to know how to answer.
“She…” He trailed off and looked over to the center of the dance floor. I followed his gaze and saw Sumira dancing exuberantly with her new husband. Then she spotted us and threw her arms in the air, pointing at us and whooping.
“Jesus.” I turned back to Christopher.
He laughed and stepped closer to me. “She said you would like to see me.”
My mind jammed, caught between the urge to call Sumira names and the question Why?Why did she say that? Why did you agree to come?
